Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple Inc. Here is an extract from a commencement speech he made back on 2005.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. [Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. YES!

What ever Edera might say about my special qualities I have to point out that it was pure luck and a measure of inattention on my part which had us sitting in the Tower Ballroom Blackpool yesterday afternoon. I’d always wanted to see it live having watch Come Dancing on TV back in the 1960’s. O the glamour, the thousands of sequins. The frothy frocks. At that time it all seemed like a million miles away from where I sat. I’d not have contemplated wearing anything like what I saw, nor would I have danced ballroom either. I was far too shy for that sort of thing. Yesterday there was quite a show of fancy frocks as it happened. A BBC film crew were in house making a documentary about how people entertained themselves between the wars. Melvin Bragg, no less, was doing on-camera interviews while the lovely couples danced away in the background. Ah, a touch of fairyland amidst all that we have been dealing with.

Days have been full, night turns into morning, as now. Soon Edera will be winging her way back to Japan. Sad. Our mission these past weeks has, among many other things, been to walk boxes of stuff to the ground floor of the house. And then out of the front door and into the car! Iain’s belongs will not be lonely. The charity shops are happy to receive donations.

After Goso died, my ordination sister mentioned earlier, all of her belongings were brought to the monks common room. We all had the opportunity to adopt her things, I particularly remember the pair of bright orange gaiters I used for years afterwards. Always remembering her as I tied them on. She had walked with them in McKinley National Park, as it was called then. Rev. Master said at the time that a persons belongings shouldn’t be lonely.

After our last head of the order died, back in 2003, I drank in every bit of information about hospice care. He spent the last two weeks of his life in hospital being treated intensively for cancer. In the end we brought him back to Shasta and he died there within hours of arriving. That’s where he wanted to be.

What about the quality of life as one approaches death? Now there’s a question. There is a huge amount written on this subject, in books and on the Internet too of course. Read breath taking accounts of people struggling to live in the face of overwhelming odds, and who survive. What I read, back in 2003, comforted me. Now what do I think? Well, I have to say that the quality of life, of living, during the period before death is probably most strongly conditioned by the way life has been lived to that point. Yes, having ones nearest and dearest around to attend, at home, is good. To be kept out of pain, be physically secure, and to be loved by ones family and friends, is good too. What might get lost sight of, in the push to care and to comfort, is the deeper aspect of what’s going on. What ever else is happening bodies simply wear out, and stop. Of course some want to, WANT TO, die and don’t. That’s not necessarily despair either, yet can be.

This period, longer or shorter depending on circumstances, may be an intense time on all levels. People will cast back and forth; regrets and sorrows abound, unfulfilled longings, undone deeds remembered and now not able to do, deeds done which can’t be undone. And there can be pre-death visions too, both waking visions and ones that come in sleep. My mother, reportedly, had visions in her sleep a week before she died. She referred to them as revelations. They brought her measures of peace, and faith enough to keep going while I flew back from America to be with her. And some people simply drop down dead in the garden or fall asleep in their arm chair. Sometimes it is helpful to remember that death is not a mistake. Or a failure of medical science. I’m sure doctors find death really hard.

See: The Quality of Death: Ranking end-of-life care across the world. Thanks to Walter for bringing my attention to this survey. Britain comes out top!